City administration receives Rp 1t from fuel subsidies
City administration receives Rp 1t from fuel subsidies
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Jakarta administration confirmed on Monday that it had
received a total of Rp 1 trillion in fuel-subsidy compensation
funds, of which around Rp 40 billion would be used to provide
health services for the poor.
No detailed breakdown of the funds was immediately available
on Monday.
"The City Planning Agency is still discussing details for the
allocation of the funds," assistant to the city secretary for
people's welfare Rohana Manggala said.
City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya said that the mechanism for
channeling the funds would be determined directly by the central
government.
However, researchers at the University of Indonesia (UI) have
apparently recommended that the city administration become
directly involved in the distribution of the funds in order to
guarantee that the assistance gets to the intended beneficiaries.
The central government has instructed that funds freed up by
last week's fuel subsidy removal -- translated as a 29% increase
in fuel prices -- be used to provide cheap rice, health
assistance, and primary education scholarships for poor families
nationwide, as was done in 2003.
Ida Ruwaida, executive secretary of UI's Sociology Study
Center who coordinated the 2003 fund allocation monitoring and
evaluation team from that campus, pointed out on Monday that weak
coordination among the agencies involved had left the planning
agency clueless about the distribution process.
UI and Tarumanegara University in Jakarta were among 35
universities throughout Indonesia that took part in the 2003
monitoring program, which lasted from March through December of
that year.
Last Thursday, around 55 universities signed a memorandum of
understanding on monitoring this year's allocation system for
fuel subsidy compensation funds. In 2004, there was no revision
of the long-standing and controversial fuel subsidy.
"UI monitored and evaluated East, Central, and South Jakarta,
and Tarumanegara handled West and North Jakarta, and the Thousand
Islands in 2003," said UI deputy rector Arie Susilo.
The universities are still discussing the most effective
methodology for the 2005 evaluation with the central government.
Ida explained that in the 2003 scheme, most of the assistance
was sent straight to the target populace by sectoral agencies.
To improve coordination between these sectoral agencies, Ida
said the government should form a body that can facilitate
cooperation.
"The government should map the distribution of aid more
systematically to ensure the assistance is distributed evenly and
that it goes to the right people," said Ida.
She said that one type of misallocation observed by the
universities in 2003 was the merging of funds into the budgets of
the sectoral body, as in the case of the Ministry of Health and
the State Logistics Agency, so that it became unclear where the
funds actually originated from.
Due to this lack of coordination, there is a lack of accurate
and valid data on the actual number of recipients.
UI found that in 2003, only 88 percent of the allocated funds
for East, Central, and South Jakarta reached their target.
"We monitored and evaluated the program by handing out
questionnaires to the targeted people and conducting focus group
discussions with recipients of the aid," explained Ida, who added
that the university had sent out a team of around 60 students to
monitor the assistance programs that year.
This year, besides monitoring and evaluating distribution of
the allocated funds, the university hopes that the team assigned
can take part in determining groups to be targeted and in
building a database of recipients.